Knux is on the phone with…someone….they owe money to, and if they don’t get it, our mystery bad guy will dismantle the family business. Is…is Mother Nature on the phone? Does she travel around the country, insisting people call her Big Mama Nat, and bringing rain and hail down on people who can’t pay their loans? Were Auntie Em and Uncle Henry in deep over some cockfight bets?

Their plan to fix this, instead of, y’know, shoot jobs (I bet the Freak could totally hit up an LA Fitness for a personal trainer job), they decide that champions make more money because none of them have ever heard of Taylor Wilde. Crazzy Steve is set on challenging Sanada for the belt, but that draws the attention of DJ Zema and his glasses that would match my hair and that I might desperately want. He mocks that idea because it’s, you know, crazzy, but then TJ Perkins comes out? In his suit but not his mask? Man…that is wretched. I know I’ve said a lot about the unmasking of Manik and the retconning of his history, and I know TJ “becomes another person” when he puts the mask on, but ugh. Ugghhh. Stop it. Stop it! Masks are important. Masks have a tradition. You’re tacky and I hate you.

Best: Sure, why not, the X-Division match

I guess. Yeah. Okay. It’s not the best match, by a mile, but it’s not…horrible. It’s pretty fun. I like that triple dropkick a whole bunch, and Sanada’s bridge makes me feel a little funny. But it’s a title match, right? I mean, Sanada grants all of them title matches, but they’re not really…doing anything to lend it that gravitas, or tell a story. I mean, in the beginning Sanada kinda hangs back as the three challengers go at each other, and I had hoped that would be a theme throughout the match. But it’s not. Like…at some point these X-Division matches have to stop being about getting your shit in, and start being about an actual division with actual people with actual personalities and reasons to be there, yeah?

Best: Rockstar Spud

Oh, Spud. Dixie might be the heatseeker, but you are magical. How much better would Impact be if we had Spud in the background, silently reacting to everything? Or picture-in-picture Spud? Spud-o-Vision? I would pay for that. A monthly subscription service! And EC3 could show up sometimes. Maybe the BroMen…Sanada…oh shit, I just described Spin Cycle.

Oh well. Watch that too. It’s pretty great.

Worst: BEEEEEEYYYYYYOOOOOO, or however you make that firework noise

So Earl Sullivan Armstrong has let Dixie know that she will NOT be the replacement for MVP, which…seems kinda silly and weird. I mean, if Dixie is the owner, and the president, is she the CEO? Who does the board actually answer to? It’s not a publicly traded company, and if she’s the owner and has the controlling portion of the company, why doesn’t she have more power? Why do we have to bring in all of this business nonsense if we’re not going to accurately define roles and the regulations that come along with them? Anyways, it doesn’t matter, because our hero wants to put his boss through a table.

And that’s the other thing. Why is MVP suddenly so awful that he needs to be removed, but the female owner of the company you have been elected to represent is being stalked, harassed, and threatened with violence, but that’s cool? Earl Sullivan Armstrong you are right there and you aren’t doing a goddamn thing what the f-ck is wrong with you. Or were you on the phone calling a quorum about it because this is the first you’ve seen because you have literally no idea what happens in the company you help govern?

Bully tells Spud to “shut up, bitch” because again, he is the good guy who just wants to do good things, like follow a woman to her home, sneak in, and try to physically harm her. You know, ~just good guy things~.

What don’t you guys get?

Worst: The Slammiversary Rematch

If two men wrestle on a pay-per-view and nobody cares about it, do we have a rematch? As many times as possible, I guess.

Dreamer’s a guy who clearly loves pro wrestling, wants to entertain the fans and has an intrinsic need to create meaningful in-ring moments. Problem is, his effort is so damn apparent and obvious that it makes his work feel very forced. Starting with his “May I have another” caning with Sandman, through his title hunt in WWECW, and now his anti-Dixie “pipe bomb,” he makes his point in the first few minutes, then continues ad nauseam to put himself over as a man of the people to the point where his (probably genuine) crying looks like crocodile tears. He’s Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler when they decide to make a drama. They try so hard to be serious that you can’t see past the actor to appreciate the performance.

You can’t fight city hall/You can’t fight corporate America/They are big and you are small/You can’t fight city hall.

X-Division Match – Even my wife, who just barely tolerates watching all the wrestling with me every week (WWE TNA), said after it was over ” That seemed kind of slow to me, to be an X division match” “yeah, honey, and it was for the belt” Her- “you gotta be kidding me” “I wish I was honey, I wish I was”

+1 on the Manik thing, D.

Was anyone else half expecting that creepy lawyer to give the operations job to Spud, because well TNA?

The Bully/Dixie Soap Opera; If Dixie had 200,000 Dollars to throw around, how about putting it into some production values? Or paying your film crew? I so wanted Bully to pull off that table cover, and it be the table with Dixie’s Name on it. I woulda popped.

Since when did RubberMaid trashcans become “hardcore”?

I’m willing to give Angle a little time to show me is done being a turncoat.

And, I guess I have to get in to the Uncomfortable Zone here; If you were a young black girl, (and there were some in the audience, as well as young black men/boys) and you see 3 powerful, rich, good looking black men one after another, and each one comes out with a White Model on his arm (and the backhanded joke that MVP made about “handle-ing” them all later on “wink wink”) How is that young Black lady (14 to 20, say) supposed to feel about herself? what was the message she picked up here? I can bet it wasn’t good for her self esteem, what ever the message was. TNA, you made a BIG misstep here, in my opinion.

it’s been well established that sports stars, are role models (wrestlers especially) for young people, whether they want to be or not. And what was the role model saying here?

Sorry to harp on this, but I think things like this do far more harm than Velvet does rubbing herself on the ropes for us old geezers.

No don’t got there at all, that topic has been ad nauseum on black talk shows, tv shows, movies and forums. My answer has always been who cares? Would it be that much better if the women (who are just treated as ho’s) were indeed black, do we want young black girls thinking they should just be sex objects for rich, successful black men?

Now if you want to make the argument that TNA is lacking in black female wrestlers who can be positive role models I can agree with that.

I covered this show for 411 last night because the regular guy was sick, and it’s the first full TNA show I’ve watched since before Hogan and Bischoff arrived. I don’t know how you do it weekly, Danielle. Anyway, some thoughts:

-Twenty. That’s how many minutes of wrestling were on a two-hour wrestling show.

-The X Division match felt overly contrived to me, and it seemed to go on forever, when in fact it only lasted about four minutes. Can’t TNA just WCW it, say “screw the storylines for the X Division” and just let them wrestle for twenty minutes? Get people to care about the wrestling again, and then attempt to give them stories to care about.

-TNA crowds make me want to take a shower. They truly are the lowest common denominator.

-I’m willing to hold on demonizing Angle, but that’s probably because I attended Clarion University wrestling camp in 1992 and he was a coach there. Being one of the two biggest kids, I wrestled him pretty extensively, and that has earned him a permanent pass on all of the on-camera stuff that he does.

The only thing I liked about this show was redneck James Storm going super-heel racist. That bit I loved, because Storm is a much better heel than face.

The X-Division match was slow motion garbage. Also, Manik has been so gone, I thought, “Hey Suicide is back.”, when he first appeared. Not wearing the mask was dumb.

Monster’s Ball used to be something, right? ‘Cause that one was trash for all the reasons written about. Hey TNA, we know that Janice either isn’t going to get used at all or end up being lightly tapped into Abyss’s tummy. Stop pretending it’s a WMD.

I knew the new power-monger was going to be Angle when they teased it before the break, just by showing a pair of legs walking. No one else walks like Angle anymore (sadly). Can’t say I’m excited. Get rid of one washed-up wrestler being the boss and replace him with another.

As a reminder, former face of TNA, AJ Styles is still in possession of the second most prestigious wrestling title belt on the planet, the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, and is the champion for the hottest wrestling company in the world. Leave TNA, move up in the world.